They have their talking points at the ready for these, and they immediately got started: If we ban guns, they warned, then we have to ban knives and cars, because he used those to kill and injure people, too. California has liberal gun laws, and this proves they don’t work, they insisted. There is nothing we can do to stop gun violence, they recited; guns don't kill people, people do.

As usual, the gun nuts are wrong, and not one of these stands up to the slightest scrutiny.

Let’s start with the Right’s newest post-massacre trope: the banning of knives and cars, because the murderer in Santa Barbara used a knife to kill three people and a car to injure four.

Of course, compared to guns, cars are robustly regulated. There’s a strong registration regimen. More and more safety features have been added—including airbags and seat belts. There’s a long-standing war against drunk driving that’s included checkpoints, long sentences for offenders, and holding bartenders accountable who serve someone who’s clearly wasted. And, of course, there’s registration, licensing and tests required to prove you know how to drive an automobile. All of it has led deaths on our roads to plummet. This is why 2015 is projected to be the first year where gun deaths surpass traffic fatalities.

Cars also have a purpose other than killing. As do knives. And although, tragically, three young men were killed after being stabbed by the killer in Santa Barbara, perhaps the clearest comparison between gun violence and knife violence is provided by looking at the attack that occurred at a Chinese school in Henen Province the very same day as the Newtown Massacre. Twenty-three students were attacked in Henen and none died—as opposed to 20 murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary. Or how about the 22 injured in a knife attack at a school in Pittsburgh this past April? Nobody died there, either.

Of course, to the family of a victim, one stabbing death is too many. But clearly knives can’t kill as impersonally, as many, as fast or as at far a distance. Which might be why there haven’t been presidents knifed from book depositories (or grassy knolls, whatever your preference), there aren't drive-by knifings, and we didn’t storm Omaha Beach throwing knives.

Another favorite conservative retort to calls for stricter gun regulation has been to point to California's “liberal” gun laws, which supposedly didn’t help Santa Barbara at all. However, the fact that the shooter possessed only 10-bullet magazines and no assault weapon—or what he could legally buy—clearly did help. As terrible as this was, it could have been much worse if the gun fetishists had their way, and any manner of weapon or magazine was for sale.

Additionally, and I know this is a tough concept to understand, but we have these territories separated only by an imaginary boundary known as states. They border one another. People can drive across them at will, as they often do from Arizona—where gun laws are among the most lenient in the U.S.—to California. It is also quite easy to drive from California to Nevada, which also has lax gun laws.

This pattern extends throughout the country, from lax regulation states like Mississippi and Alaska (18.3 and 17.6 gun deaths, per 100,000 people, respectively) to strong regulation states like Rhode Island and Massachusetts (3.5 and 3.6 gun deaths per 100,000, respectively). This really isn't that hard.

And for those of you about to point out that cities like Chicago have both strict gun laws and horrifying gun violence, well, you might want to do some reading about how many of those guns came from Indiana, which has much less strict gun laws, or other parts of Illinois, where laws don’t come close to matching those in the city of Chicago. Use The Google, my friends. It's free.

In Santa Barbara, we had a young man who had been detained or interviewed three times by the police recently, including once for domestic assault. Both a social worker and his parents warned the authorities about his fraying mental state. But all of that led to no red flags popping up to stop him from buying three semi-automatic guns and enough bullets to take on the police department.

In England, Japan, Canada and Australia, that would have been enough to stop him cold. In these places, as is common sense, requirements exist such as third-party references from family and/or friends, rigorous psychological exams and background checks. Any blemish on one’s record pointing to violence would have been a red flag during these tests. Additionally, there are waiting periods before one can receive a gun after initial purchase, making it more likely someone mentally unstable would be caught doing something else in the meantime, or perhaps even get the help he so desperately needed before obtaining a firearm.

But, if like foaming NRA mouthpiece Wayne LaPierre, you still are a believer in the almighty assault weapon and like your guns plentiful and unregulated, I have a fantastic vacation destination for you! It’s called Iraq. Every household with a male in it is allowed to have an assault weapon, no questions asked. If that is not your cup of tea, may I suggest Afghanistan? They also love their guns. Perplexing, that surely as the NRA wouldn’t have predicted based on their high rate of gun ownership, both these countries are overflowing with gun violence. For some reason, being awash in guns has not led them to be modern-day Gardens of Eden.

However, If you do truly fear that “the government is going to use any information to come get my guns,” then I have a real three-letter organization, not part of the government, that you may want to fear. It’s called the NRA, and they’re collecting your private information as we speak. Good luck convincing the money-grubbing charlatans among their leadership not to sell what has been called a “massive secret database” of member information to any advertiser looking to make a buck.

Meanwhile, the most commonly abused talking point to come out of this tragedy was the old standby, that “guns don’t kill people, people do.” I don’t buy it, but here is my question, if you do. Wouldn’t you support background checks for People, require serious training for People purchasing weaponry that can kill, institute waiting periods for People who are angry or suicidal at a specific moment? Shouldn’t those People also have to have liability insurance as they do with cars (personal responsibility!), so society doesn’t pick up the cost of stupid decisions made by these People?

I know, your mind is spinning right now. Don’t bother. You are wrong on this one, as you are on everything else. Your reaction to shootings is to think first of your guns, which is shameful. The rest of us prioritize our children’s lives first. As my friend, the brilliant host of The Zero Hour--the #1 most downloaded podcast when it debuted earlier this month—RJ Eskow says, we’re not anti-gun. We’re pro-kindergartner.

We believe in that part of the Constitution—the Preamble actually, which comes before the 2nd Amendment you don’t even understand—that promises us that our government will protect “the general Welfare” and “domestic tranquility.” I’d argue that with weekly mass shootings occurring—in the short time it has taken me to write this, there has been another gun massacre, this time in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina—Congress is directly disobeying the Constitution, as well as the Will of the People, to give special consideration to an interest group that funds its members’campaigns.

“Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA,” he said. “They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, ‘Stop this madness; we don’t have to live like this’?”

SPECIAL NOTE

When I wrote about this shooting on Saturday, I relied upon the earliest reporting that said that the shooter in Santa Barbara had a high-capacity magazine. I was wrong. He had 41 10-round magazines, or 410 bullets at his disposal, and according to the Los Angeles Times, three semi-automatic pistols.

I also made the mistake of relying on reporting that he had shot all of his victims. Of course we now know he shot 12 people, killing three of them. He stabbed three others to death and hit four more innocents with his car, injuring them.

While not altering the thrust of the piece one bit, they were errors--not Mr. LaPierre’s purposeful lies about how “Obama Wants To Outlaw Guns in His Second Term” or shooters choose gun-free zones (tell that to Ronald Reagan’s Secret Service and police protection!) for their attacks. But they were mistakes nonetheless, and I apologize for these errors.